Saturday, November 3, 2018

Questions Still Remain about Buhari’s School Certificate

The West African Examination Council yesterday presented
President Muhammadu Buhari with what it said was an “attestation” of his “lost”
secondary school certificate. This should have settled the controversy that his
consistent failure to authenticate his claim to have taken the West African School
Certificate has ignited. But several questions still remain, which I will get to
shortly.

But, first, I didn’t think it was even in the realm of
possibility that Buhari would lie about his school certificate. A former
secondary school classmate of Buhari’s, who wasn’t the president’s supporter, had
told me in confidence that Buhari did take his school certificate exams in 1961.
That was why when military authorities said in 2015 that Buhari did not submit
a secondary school certificate— and the PDP impeached the credibility of the
statement of result he presented from his secondary school in 2015—I defended
him in my January 24, 2015 column in the Daily
Truston Saturday titled, “Between Obama’s ‘Birthers’ and Buhari’s ‘WASCers’.”

Now I’ve realized that I might have been misled. As I’ve
noted in previous columns, it would have been infinitely cheaper, less burdensome,
and certainly more fitting for Buhari to have simply produced his school
certificate than for him to hire more than a dozen Senior Advocates of Nigeria
to defend his right not to produce it. Only a person who has something to hide
would opt for the expensive, cumbersome, and circuitous route Buhari had chosen
until now.

In the heat of Buhari’s school certificate controversy in
2015, the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate (UCLES), which
administered the West African School Certificate exams in the early 1960s,
said, “We can only confirm or verify results at the direct request of or with
the permission of a candidate. This is in accordance with the provisions of the
Data Protection Act 1998 and section 40 of the Freedom of Information Act
2000.” Why didn’t Buhari take up this challenge since 2015?

If Buhari truly took his WASC and wants to settle doubts
about this once and for all, he should write to the UCLES, which is now known
as Cambridge Assessment, and request it to write to the Independent National
Electoral Commission (INEC) to certify that he took the West African School
Certificate exam. This is particularly important because the WAEC office in
Ghana said in a 2015 memo that it had no record of a "Mohamed Buhari who
attended school in Provincial Secondary School, Katsina in Nigeria." Note
that WASC results are searchable in every branch of WAEC.

Every Nigerian knows that WAEC in Nigeria is susceptible to
compromise and manipulation. A
university classmate of mine, who died in a car crash two years ago, once
confided in me that he bribed WAEC officials in Lagos to issue him a certificate
for an exam he did not sit for. WAEC’s well-known credibility problems and the over-zealousness
its officials displayed in going to the Presidential Villa to present the
president with an “attestation” of his certificate out of “respect” for him
call the integrity of the attestation into question.

I have been informed by someone who should know that the
statement of result issued by Buhari’s secondary school in 2015, which WAEC has
now reproduced and validated, was the result of his mock exam, which was the
basis for his principal’s recommendation to the Nigerian Army that reads as
follows: “I recommend Mohamed Buhari for consideration as a potential officer.
I consider that Mohamed Buhari will pass West African School Certificate, with
credits in English, Maths and three other subjects.” This recommendation and
Buhari’s handwritten application, apparently, are the only documents in Buhari’s
personal file with the military.

Notice that the principal spelled Buhari’s first name as “Mohamed”
rather than “Muhammadu,” Buhari’s preferred spelling of his first name. The
statement of result Buhari’s school issued in 2015 was probably merely being
faithful to the records in his mock exam. WAEC’s “attestation” of Buhari’s
certificate is also faithful to this record—and spelling.

However, in his October 18, 1961 “Application to sit for RNA
Qualifying Examination,” Buhari spelled his first name as “Muhammadu.” “I have
the honour to apply for regular service in the Royal Nigeria Army. My name is
Muhammadu Buhari and I am a Fulani. I am eighteen years old and I am in Form
Six at the Provincial Secondary School Katsina,” he wrote.

Although it’s not unusual for Nigerian schools to ignore
students’ preferred spellings of their names and insist on their own variants,
it was (and still is) often the case that during registration for WAEC exams,
schools would ask students to make known the preferred spellings and order of
their names. It is curious that Buhari spelled his first name as “Muhammadu” in
1961, but his WASC from the same year has his principal’s spelling variant of
his name. Was he denied the privilege of using his preferred spelling of his
name?

Most importantly, though, if Buhari did take his WASC, why
is there no record of it in his personal file? “It is a practice in the
Nigerian Army that before candidates are shortlisted for commissioning into the
officers’ cadre of the Service, the Selection Board verifies the original
copies of credentials that are presented. However, there is no available record
to show that this process was followed in the 1960s. Neither the original copy,
Certified True Copy (CTC), nor statement of result of Major General M Buhari’s
WASC result, is in his personal file,” the Nigerian Army spokesman said in
2015. Therefore, presidential spokesman Femi
Adesina’s claim that the military had “lost” Buhari’s certificate is both ludicrous and fraudulent.

A retired high-ranking military officer who is Buhari’s
contemporary told me a few days ago that no one in 1960s northern Nigeria who
had the kind of WASC result Buhari claims to have would enlist in the army. He
said such a person would most certainly enroll as an undergraduate in a
university in Nigeria or abroad.

This issue is troubling for at least two reasons. One, if
Buhari can’t get Cambridge Assessment to issue a statement certifying that he
took WASC, it would be a prima facie case of perjury or, as it’s called in the
(northern Nigerian) Penal Code, false evidence, which is punishable by
imprisonment. Buhari swore under oath that he had a West African School
Certificate.

People who repeat the canard that Buhari doesn't need a
school certificate to be president because he obtained postsecondary school
credentials while in the military miss the real point at issue, which is that Buhari
possibly perjured himself when he said under oath that he had a school
certificate.

Nigeria’s new Electoral Act requires people running for
office to submit proof of the authenticity of the credentials they claim to
possess. Buhari did not obey this law in 2015, which should have caused him to
be disqualified.

The second reason Buhari’s possible perjury is troubling is
that it has eroded his moral authority. The president has been so crippled by
the lumbering moral burden that this issue has imposed on him that he hasn’t
been able to take action against people with questionable credentials in his
government. It’s no wonder that he has the dubious honor of presiding over a
government with the most certificate forgers, perjurers, NYSC dodgers, etc.
than any government in recent memory. Like attracts like, after all.

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About Me

Dr. Farooq Kperogi is a professor, journalist, newspaper columnist, author, and blogger based in Greater Atlanta, USA. He received his Ph.D. in communication from Georgia State University's Department of Communication where he taught journalism for 5 years and won the top Ph.D. student prize called the "Outstanding Academic Achievement in Graduate Studies Award." He earned his Master of Science degree in communication (with a minor in English) from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and won the Outstanding Master's Student in Communication Award. He earned his B.A. in Mass Communication (with minors in English and Political Science) from Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria, where he won the Nigerian Television Authority Prize for the Best Graduating Student. He writes a weekly column for the Nigerian Tribune. His research has won top awards. Read more about him here: https://www.farooqkperogi.com/p/about-me.html